BAYOU LA BATRE — On Alabama's Gulf Coast, where issues like rising sea levels, powerful storms and shoreline erosion are a threat to wildlife habitats and living environments, The Nature Conservancy is expanding its restoration efforts to protect vulnerable coastal communities and ecosystems.

The organization is working on projects at Coffee Island and Bayou Coden in Mobile County, building on more than a decade of restoration work in the region. This current project aims to strengthen natural storm barriers, restore marsh habitat and protect the local fishing and maritime industries that depend on this coast.

In Bayou La Batre, a two-mile rock breakwater system is being built to protect Coffee Island, a 29-acre barrier island in the Mississippi Sound. The island, which is the second largest barrier island in the sound, provides nesting habitat that is essential for migratory birds and shorebirds.

Coffee Island also serves as a natural buffer against storms, helping protect nearby communities from things like storm surge.

TNC has been working around the island since 2010, initially installing experimental reefs along its shoreline to reduce wave energy and encourage habitat growth. Although the reefs did provide habitat for fish and shellfish, they was not as effective in protecting the shoreline from things like persistent waves and storm surge.

Judy Haner, marine and freshwater programs director for TNC, said the organization learned valuable lessons from those early efforts.

"What we learned from all of that is what we're doing now; frankly we use rock because rock stays in place," Haner said.

The new project will use approximately 80,000 tons of limestone rock to construct 10 overlapping breakwater segments along roughly two miles of shoreline. Construction is expected to take about six months.

Unlike the original reefs, which were separated by larger openings, the new structures will overlap to provide more continuous protection while still allowing water and marine life to move between them.

These breakwaters are designed to reduce wave energy before it reaches the island's marshes, helping preserve habitat that is especially vulnerable to things like sea-level rise.

Haner said the rock structures also offer an important advantage: They can be reinforced with more rock as conditions change and time goes by.

Close to Coffee Island, TNC is also working on the restoration of the Bayou Coden waterfront, alongside engineers, local property owners and government partners. This proposed project would use nature-based solutions for restoration, including breakwaters and creating marsh habitat to protect the shoreline and support the area's working waterfront.

A key component of this restoration circles around finding beneficial uses for sediment removed during routine dredging of nearby navigation channels. Instead of disposing of the dredged material in open water, the organization hopes to use it to rebuild eroded shorelines, create marsh habitat and strengthen natural storm buffers.

The organization is coordinating with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to explore how the material could be placed in the designated areas as navigation channels are maintained.

Haner said the organization considers community involvement essential to the success of its restoration work.

"What happens for these projects is, we're the implementers, but these are the community's projects," Haner said. "We ask the community what they want."

TNC works with researchers from Dauphin Island Sea Lab and the University of South Alabama to independently monitor restoration results and identify opportunities for improvements.

Haner said one long-term goal is to establish a network of restoration sites that can receive dredged sediment when nearby channels need maintenance. Some locations could use the sediment to create new land, while already existing marshes could benefit from thin layers of the material to help them keep up with the pace of rising water levels.

"Every grain of sediment has a use. It's up to us to figure out how it fits into the puzzle," Haner said.

As restoration continues across Alabama's coast, The Nature Conservancy hopes the projects will demonstrate how protecting natural habitats can also strengthen communities whose livelihoods depend on the water.

"These projects will not only protect shorelines and working waterfronts from erosion, they will also restore vital habitat for birds, as well as fish, shrimp, oysters and other species," said Mary Kate Brown, The Nature Conservancy's director of Alabama coastal programs. 

Gabriella Chavez is a Report for America corps member who writes about growth and development in Baldwin County and our natural spaces for Gulf Coast Media. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today.